Check this blog Dasha! :)

There are so many great suggestions in this blog! One guy recommends cryogenic setup with acetone bath and dry ice. Acetone will be cold at -50C. Then you submerge hard drive in it (in a polyethylene bag, I assume). Cold acetone will reduce drive temperature very quickly and will keep it cold efficiently while you restoring data.

Apparently cold can do magic to computer parts! One guy had a laptop battery that could hold no more than 2 minutes. After freezing it overnight the battery holds 2 hours!!! Now that's cool.

Here is another nice comment:
I actually got my harddrive to work by telling a joke to my mother in law.. Her icy stare froze my harddrive and I could run it for 1 hour. enough time to get a kebab. When I got back with my kebab it had stopped working. So i lost all my 'how to save a harddrive' text files... dammit!

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I wonder what it is that's so valuable on there for you to go to such lengths to restore it

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Gou ni itte wa, gou ni shitagae.

Bagel Roll:

I wonder what it is that's so valuable on there for you to go to such lengths to restore it

8 years worth of financial transactions and last two tax returns.

The good thing is I have all tax returns printed. The last financial data I restored from backup is from end of February. It is not that bad, just two months of data missing. I guess I will keep trying to restore as far as it's fun and not expensive

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Bagel Roll:

I wonder what it is that's so valuable on there for you to go to such lengths to restore it

What are you talking about? Can't you tell how much fun he is having?

Muidugi:

Bagel Roll:

I wonder what it is that's so valuable on there for you to go to such lengths to restore it

What are you talking about? Can't you tell how much fun he is having?

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Status update:

SpinRite did not work. The message was "unable to read drive. Can not continue". That was strange to hear from a recovery software.

ERD Tools did not work either. Chkdsk would not work since drive can not be mapped to a letter.

GoodBoy suggested EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard. I was running hard drive with this software and IDE enclosure connector inside the freezer (-8F) for two days and a half. It recognized 0 files.

I guess my next option is unfreeze the drive, connect to IDE controller and run EASEUS at the room temperature. If it doesn't work, I will place drive into the oven to heat it to 260F for 20 minutes. If this does not work either I have one last resort - microwave oven.

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There is also a new kind of oven, marketed as flavorwave and nuwave.  It uses a combination of convection heating, microwave, and infrared.

They claim you don;t even have to defrost, which saves valuable time away from your family.

I pity the fool who uses anything else on their damaged sectors.

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"Я это понимаю на рациональном уровне, но не могу принять на эмоциональном" --Бизнесмен Борис Березовский

Hmmm, I do not trust oven that is made of plastic or glass and using microwave radiation. I have some precious organs I need to keep from overheating...

I am curious though if Foreman grill can fix Sector 0 read problem...

The other way of fixing a magnetic head that stuck in incorrect position is to gently hit hard drive in a corner with a hammer. That will allow head moving again. I don't think I have that particular problem but I may try this method as well.

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_Sergey_:

Status update:

SpinRite did not work. The message was "unable to read drive. Can not continue". That was strange to hear from a recovery software.

ERD Tools did not work either. Chkdsk would not work since drive can not be mapped to a letter.

GoodBoy suggested EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard. I was running hard drive with this software and IDE enclosure connector inside the freezer (-8F) for two days and a half. It recognized 0 files.

I guess my next option is unfreeze the drive, connect to IDE controller and run EASEUS at the room temperature. If it doesn't work, I will place drive into the oven to heat it to 260F for 20 minutes. If this does not work either I have one last resort - microwave oven.

As I said before, if chkdsk can't run the chance for any recovery software to do the job is really low, because most likely it means that the disk is not spinning or the arm stuck. That's why the next step to try was a freezer. Since the drive is recognized by the computer, the electronic part of the HDD is probably OK. Few people told me that they replaced the board (took it off some old HDD) and it fixed the problem. I've never done it personally and have a hard time just imagining myself trying to solder all the connections back. I'd say at this point your only other option is professional help. I mean technical help.

Thanks Muidugi for specifying what kind of professional help I need!

I have a suspicion that HDD on USB cable is totally different from HDD connected to the controller. If I understand this right (I hope I do) USB has a defined file access protocol that lays on top of USB driver, then on top of Windows driver. Recovery software dose not have direct access to driver commands. If I connect HDD to IDE controller recovery software can access drive through low level driver interface (does Vista allow it?). Or even at the level of BIOS interrupt 13h.

As far as replacing drive board I can handle solder iron very well and have no problem replacing it. I just need to find exactly same board somewhere. Also my drive is spinning and head is moving (I can feel it ;)

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SpinRite is not a recovery software. I mean, it does not recover data, it fixes bad sectors on a drive. If you think your drive is mechanically OK, maybe you should try to use something like "Undelete". Well, you should try it in any case, it won't make things worse, that's for sure.

 

Thanks Muidugi! One interesting phrase I read is ScanDisk made more harm to hard disks than any other programs. Indeed it marks bad sector as unaccessible without trying to recover data from it. If it also repositions bad sector to a new sector to keep file structure you can no longer restore whole file.

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 So, what's the status of your "project" ?

 Had any success yet ?   If yes, which method helped you ?

 

 

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*Good*Boy*

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just remember.. before you insult someone.. walk a mile in their shoes.. that way you're a mile away.. and you have their shoes
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Freezer did not help restoring hard drive. After thawing I used EASEUS Data Recovery software. Software did not find logical partitions. Then is was trying to scan sectors. First sector took more than a day to scan and did not finish. There were more than 200,000 sectors to scan. After simple calculation I realized my life is too short.

I think the problem is drive had two logical partitions. And corruption happened in the area where partition information defined. Software was not successful to do logical file restoration since it did not know where to start. I removed drive cover to check there were no mechanical damages and drive spinned and moved head properly.

Finally I gave up. It was fun and I learned a lot. Thank you guys for your help! I really appreciate it!!!

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I have the same problem at work that i did in this topic.  People try to solve some problem with idiotic methods, i see it, i tell them, no one listens, they f*ck everything up worse than it was before and look like idiots and then I resend my email from a month ago and we do it right. 

 But never, in my entire career has anyone said "at least we had fun and we learned a lot". 

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"Я это понимаю на рациональном уровне, но не могу принять на эмоциональном" --Бизнесмен Борис Березовский